alt Hacker News> "The ends don't justify the means"
Eh. The ends do justify the means, but only inasmuch as those means actually do help to achieve the ends — astonishingly often, they don't (and rarer, but also often, actually bring you in the opposite direction from those end goals), and so remain unjustified.
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Thanks.
That sentence is constantly repeated, as if it would be some kind of absolute truth. The fact is, for every end, there will be probably some means that are totally justified, and some that not.
I think the original context is: no matter how high, pure and perfect the end is, it does not meany any mean is justified.
I agree, but it's only half of the equation.
Your solution also can't be worse than the problem it solves!
Overly clear example: Killing your noisy neighbors actually achieves the end of a quiet home. But that really doesn't justify it.
I personally believe quite strongly that some things are just immoral on their face and that I would rather fail/die without using them than succeed/live while using them. I agree that in very many cases where people do these things, they are, in the long run, counter productive, but I also believe that even if could be conclusively proven that this wasn't the case, I would still advocate against their use.